Midnight
Nothing is right without Bastien. We were hoping Finis might call him back and we could tell him that we love him and make sure that he’s okay, but so far, nothing.
“That’s the thing about death,” Lex says, pushing porridge around her bowl. “For all our studies and learning, we still can’t control it.”
She’s talking about her sister as well as Bastien, that much is certain. We’ve spent the last year as a threesome and now a limb has been cut out from our family.
It aches and gnaws in my chest. There are traces of him in the flat, on campus, in every hall and corridor and classroom. He left a mark everywhere he went, and now all that’s left are fading shadows.
It’s wrong. All of it is wrong. We can’t even have a funeral until the mess with Architecti and Interitus is dealt with.
So he’s just gone. And we can’t grieve, and I am so godsdamned tired.
Lex pushes the bowl away and leans her head on her forearms. So I slide into the seat next to her and lean on her.
Lucy strolls into our apartment, a grim expression on her face.
“Architecti has been trying to push Interitus away from campus, but it seems the angels are circling. I don’t think it will be long before Interitus comes for me again.”
I breathe deep and let out a heavy sigh.
Lucy frowns at me. “Are you okay?” she says.
“Not really.” I sit up, but everything hurts. I know I’m thirty now, but I’m somewhat fit. I didn’t expect age to hurt so much.
I stroke Lex’s back and she makes a pained noise. “Lex?” I say as Lucy sits at the table.
“It’s just… you know the books Lucy stole from the underworld?” Lex sits up and gives Lucy an appreciative smile.
“Yeah?” I say.
“I found out what happened to my sister last night. I couldn’t sleep cause usually I’d hear Bastien’s bloody snoring and it was too quiet, so I took to the books again…”
“You want to talk about it?” Lucy asks.
Lex twiddles with her fingers. “Short story is that I made a stupid mistake. Took a deal with a demon and my sister lost her life over it.”
Lucy glances at the table, suddenly very interested in the marks and grooves. “I’m sorry,” she says.
It must be awkward for her as a demon—or more accurately, ex-demon—to be friends with mortals.
It occurs to me then that I am a demon and perhaps I could make deals.
Strange, that actually appeals. The magic inside my chest rumbles at the thought, almost like the sound of an excited cat trilling at birds.
I don’t want to contemplate that right now, though.
I think I’ve made enough deals for a lifetime.
Lex picks at a fingernail. “The strange thing is, for all my sister knew about demons and the underworld, for all her academic achievements, I don’t believe she took more than the basic contract modules.
So I’d never thought to study it much. I was trying to follow her footsteps, you know?
Figure out what she knew, and what would have driven her to make that decision. ”
“You found the answer in a contract?”
She shakes her head. “No, one of the books Lucy gave me was on contract law. This whole time, I’d been focusing on necro languages hoping I’d be able to speak to her or find something in an ancient demon language. And I was looking in the wrong place.”
She’s clearly lost in her thoughts, so we give her space to let it out.
She sighs, nudges the spoon around the bowl and takes a bite, swallows and then continues.
“The irony is, I’m not sure she did know.
I think all this time I was trying to find an answer that just wasn’t there.
I was convinced she must have figured something out to break the contract.
But in reality, I think she just loved me enough that she sacrificed herself. ”
Lucy sits up. Our eyes dart to her.
“You know, don’t you?” Lex says.
Lucy chews on her lip. “You said sacrifice?”
Lex nods.
“If another sacrifices themselves and offers themselves up instead of the original contractee, a demon will usually jump at the offer,” Lucy says.
I shift uncomfortably. I’ve sacrificed myself many times, some worth it, some definitely not.
Lex’s eyes are wet as she says, “Apparently, it creates a far greater magic, more powerful than what the original contract produces.”
Lucy grabs Lex’s hand and rubs the back of it with her thumb. “It does and that’s why the demon will always take the sacrifice.”
“Wait, but I—” I start.
Lex and Lucy both shake their heads, cutting me off.
It’s Lucy that answers. “Not at the point of contract creation.”
Lex gives me a weak smile. “Yeah, I already thought of you. I read the book twice to see if I could find a way to get you out of the contract with Ignatius.”
“There wasn’t anything useful?” I ask.
Her lips press thin. I figured as much.
She reaches out to comfort me but before our fingers touch, Lucy gasps and stands up from the table.
“Oh fuck,” she says and slaps her hand over her mouth while dragging her eyes to mine.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Lex frowns at Lucy. “You look like you’ve seen a family member’s shade, what happened?”
Lucy drags her gaze to me. “I knew you were off. But I’ve been so distracted. Oh gods… How long have you felt the kind of tired that sleep isn’t helping…?”
I swallow hard. “Since—”
But she doesn’t wait for an answer. Lucy drags me from the table and out the apartment door.
“Where are we going?” I say, trying to slow her down.
“Just… oh gods. You need to come with me.”
She leads me back to Mortis church and into the dungeons, which are beyond grim. I can’t believe Ignatius kept Lucy in here, fucking bastard.
The stone cobbles beneath my feet are damp and the chill in here eats away at me, seeping under my jacket.
It’s dim, the sconces barely providing sufficient light. I shrug my jacket tighter around my shoulders and hurry to follow Lucy.
I am weary.
Beyond, if I’m being honest. Lucy is right, I am exhausted in a way that defies words. I need to sleep. My skin is dry and flaky, and my joints ache.
It’s how I imagine the elderly feel, weary right through to their very soul. Ready for it to end.
“I wondered when I’d see you,” Ignatius says, but not to Lucy, to me.
He’s curled in the centre of a cell, the same one he trapped her in, cuffed in the same chains. I do love a sense of poetic justice.
The sight of him shivering and dirty is not as satisfying as I expected. Apparently suffering, even for those who deserve it, isn’t gratifying. His clothes are torn and the cell has a ripe stench: a vile mix of body odour, stale piss, drying faeces and metal.
My nose wrinkles.
“Yeah? Waiting for me to come so you could gloat?”
He tilts his chin at me. Despite being the one imprisoned, he still can’t let go of his ego, but then, I suppose he does have the upper hand here.
“What did you do, Father?”
He keeps his face aimed at me but flicks his eyes to Lucy.
“I did what any devil does. I made a deal.”
“Are you intending to elaborate or do I have to play twenty questions to figure out what’s wrong with me?” I say.
Lucy moves to the cell bars and grips them, her knuckles white. “Did you overwrite the original deal? Or did you add a subclause?”
Her voice is strained and tight. I slide against the dungeon wall. The weight of realisation hitting me before he even responds. This is not going to be good.
“The original deal was old. Really old. At least in human terms,” he says.
“Father,” Lucy hisses. “Answer the fucking question.”
His chains jangle as he moves position and gets comfortable, but he makes no move to elaborate faster. “While our new deal affected the old one, the original one was cemented into your marrow.”
“What does that even mean?” I say.
“It means he lied. He didn’t make a new deal with you. He added a subclause to the original one. So the original deal was never replaced. The clause just sat on top of it.” She leans her head against the bars, her shoulders heaving up and down with the weight of whatever this means.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
Lucy slaps the wall. “He added conditions to the original one. Conditions that bought him what he wanted, me, without cancelling his right to your soul. The original contract is still running underneath. It always was.”
Ignatius turns to me. “What my daughter isn’t saying is that the fabric of the universe still wants your soul reaped. The subclause bought you some time, but ultimately you still need to be reaped to settle the balance.”
“There’s no getting out of this,” Lucy says, her voice cracking.
I knead my forehead. “Or else what? What happens if I’m not reaped?”
He shrugs. “The contract doesn’t disappear just because its deadline passes. It collects the debt any way it can. Usually, the soul begins to decay from the inside.”
I churn his words over, shift position on the floor, my back aching where it presses into the damp stone. My soul is decaying…
Ignatius’s smile turns to a sneer. He cocks his head at me, waiting for me to understand.
Lucy finally stands up and when she turns to face me, there’s a streak of tears rolling down her cheeks.
“What does that mean? If I’m not reaped, my soul will what? Die? Decay? Disappear?”
He nods once. “All of the above. Either way, you are going to die. Let yourself be reaped and you live out your life in the underworld, or you don’t and your soul will eventually decay into nothing. But fate is coming for you, one way or another.”
With that, he turns his back on me and we’re dismissed. The realisation that this was all for nothing weighs heavier than any countdown to reaping ever did.
“Nothing left of my soul?” I whisper.
“Bingo,” Ignatius says.
“How long?” I ask, my voice meek.
But Ignatius is done with me, so it’s Lucy who answers, her voice barely audible.
“If we’re lucky, a week. Maybe a bit longer.”